"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." began the United States declaration of independence. 232 years after the American patriots set about creating the government English and Scottish philosophers from Locke to Reid had only imagined for two hundred years prior, those same truths are still self-evident.
While the United States is far from perfect, and its form of republican liberal democracy in need of a renewal, the Declaration still inspires. What's more, the Americans break from the British Empire inspired political reform in the Britain itself, leading to the Radicals, the Chartists and the 1832 Reform Act.
Britain's constitutional monarchy owes much to the American revolution, as the American revolution owes much to the monarchy.
